eBooks Mess With Poetic Intent
eBooks continue to receive a lot of press, particularly when James Patterson becomes the first to sell more than 1 million ebooks and Kindle ebooks have outsold hardcovers. But are ebooks the best option for all genres and will they translate into sales for short stories and poetry.
One poet -- Billy Collins -- has taken issue with ebooks. The recent translation of his book, Ballistics, into an ebook was a disaster. In one poem, a word was pushed onto a new line, creating a four-line stanza rather than the three-line stanza of the original poem. According to a recent Associated Press story, ebook distributors and publishers cannot guarantee that the integrity of poems will be maintained once in electronic form. Large indentations and other styles will likely lose their integrity in ebook form, creating new poems that are different than the poet envisioned or than the originally published poem. These changes do not only apply to new poems, but also for the poems of older, dead poets. Think of what [raise the shade] by e.e. cummings would look like in an ebook.
Collins says, "The critical difference between prose and poetry is that prose is kind of like water and will become the shape of any vessel you pour it into to. Poetry is like a piece of sculpture and can easily break." He's right, and there are many other poets who are wary of providing their books electronically, even though it would behoove them to do so if they hope to sell more books.
Poets by and large do not earn a lot from their work, but the integrity of each poem is highest in their thoughts and actions when they produce, read, and sell those poems to the public. However, poetry is available electronically across the Internet from online literary journals to other resources. The question is how long will it take ebook publishers to get the poems right, especially when other online poetry magazines are ensuring the integrity of poems.